Humanities, Arts + Social Sciences

Art History’s Erin Benay earns a 2017 John S. Diekhoff Award for Graduate Teaching Erin Benay’s plans to become a museum curator changed the moment she taught her first class as a graduate student at Rutgers University. “That was it—I loved it—and knew it immediately,” said Benay, an assistant…

Art history’s Henry Adams shapes legacy of Andrew Wyeth at a pivotal period of reconsideration In the world of painting, rare is the combination of critical acclaim and commercial success. As such, the enormous popularity and prosperity enjoyed by realist Andrew Wyeth led to his very name becoming…

Mothers smoking crack cocaine during pregnancy and its lingering effects on their children are the focus of 20-plus years of ongoing research by Case Western Reserve University While the crack cocaine epidemic peaked in the late 1980s, its effects are still causing harm to an estimated 3 million…

Fear of confronting the tensions and conflicts brought on by existential concerns—the “big questions” of life—is linked with poorer mental health, including higher levels of depression, anxiety and difficulty regulating emotions, according to a new Case Western Reserve University study. Julie…

Odds are long for any application for a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) fellowship—only about 7 percent are awarded. Even longer are the odds that two professors from the same department each receive one of the prestigious grants in the same year. Unlikely as it may be, Erin Benay and…

Study: Older men adhere closely to an idealized masculinity script that is incompatible with the realities of later life As men age, they continue to follow dominant ideas of masculinity learned as youth, leaving them unequipped for the assaults of old age, according to a new study. The mismatch…

A Case Western Reserve University research project that has become a national model for helping reshape how sexual assaults are investigated and prosecuted—including cases borne from rape kits 20-plus years old—will share two new grants totaling $3 million from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ…

Entitlement—a personality trait driven by exaggerated feelings of deservingness and superiority—may lead to chronic disappointment, unmet expectations and a habitual, self-reinforcing cycle of behavior with dire psychological and social costs, according to new research by Case Western Reserve…

Testing backlogged sexual assault kits leads to the imprisonment of more rapists—preventing future sexual assaults and saving would-be victims and communities millions of dollars, according to a new analysis by Case Western Reserve University. Thanks to access granted by the Cuyahoga County…

Henry Adams catalogues the first-ever retrospective of artist Dexter Davis Dexter Davis spends his days as a guard at the Cleveland Museum of Art, roaming its galleries and protecting prized works, including one of his own. As a Cleveland-based artist of national significance, Davis is the subject…